


Thirteen Ways

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Incest, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-02
Updated: 2008-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirteen ways of looking at Sam Winchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirteen Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Angelgazing and Fleurdeleo for looking it over.

after Wallace Stevens

i.

Sam's walked away, more times than he'd like to admit, left Dean behind without looking back. Looking back never did anyone any good (all that's left is a pillar of salt, a lost love, a dark hole where the heart should be) and Sam knows better, knows he'd never be able to walk away if he had to watch Dean watch him leave.

 

ii.

With Jess, Sam is only himself, not John Winchester's boy or Dean Winchester's little brother. He's half of a whole, this time by choice, and he imagines spending the rest of his life as Jessica Moore's husband.

He never wants to leave Jess, wants to live wrapped up in her smile and her love. He holds back all the parts of himself he thinks she won't understand, not because he wants it to be easy to leave, but because he wants to make it easy for her to stay. He promises himself that someday, he'll tell her everything, and let her laughter chase the shadows away. He thinks his love for her, and hers for him, is enough to keep them together.

 

iii.

Sam comes back, because it's _Dean_.

It's _always_ been Dean, though somehow Dean's never known it (maybe Sam's never wanted him to know, one weakness that could always be used against him). When Dean says, I can't do it alone, it's the truth and a lie all in one, and Sam knows exactly what he means.

There's the warm wash of home when he gets into the car for the first time in three years, the smell of stale grease and gun cleaner, salt and grave dirt and leather that says Dean and Dad and safe the way the bright lights of Stanford's lecture halls and libraries never have.

 

iv.

Sam stays because he has nowhere else to go. Another lie wrapped in the truth, and Sam understands, he gets it now, not just his father's obsessive quest, but his brother's peripatetic existence--he can't put down roots when the roots have burned away and the earth has been salted in his wake.

 

v.

Dean's always been larger than life, so Sam's not used to seeing him look small, fragile, lost. But there in the hospital bed, that's exactly how he looks, and it's like Sam's world is falling apart.

He reads his way through Dad's journal by the bright fluorescent light of Dean's hospital room, and goes back to the motel to make phone calls, every contact any of them has ever made, clinging to the hope that somewhere, someone can save Dean, if only he looks long and hard enough.

Nebraska is chilly and wet, and Sam believes, Sam _has_ to believe, when Roy LeGrange calls Dean up onto the stage and lays hands on him.

The cost is high, but Sam would pay it a thousand times and more to keep Dean safe and by his side.

 

vi.

Sam steps to Dean's side when Dean says, He's not Dad, because Dean knows Dad better than anyone. And he listens when Dean says, Don't you do it when Dad's asking him to shoot, to kill the demon, to finally end the hunt they've been on his whole life.

Because Dean's more important than any hunt, than any kill, and Sam knows that Dad's death would break him (break them both), if he's not already broken beyond repair. Sam's praying for him to be all right when the semi plows into the car.

Sam hears the sickening crunch of metal, feels the sharp sting of pain as his head hits the steering wheel, tastes the salt-warm-copper tang of blood on his tongue.

His voice sounds strange, false, but he's always had a good poker face and this demon doesn't know his tells. He points the Colt and knows he's willing to shoot to kill, and the demon must know it too, because it dissipates.

Sam slumps back against the driver's seat and prays.

 

vii.

He wishes there were something he could do for Dean now, but even though Dad's journal is a testament to grief, there's nothing in it to make the pain go away, fill the hole his death has left in Dean. In them both.

Sam believes Dad made the right choice, though he stumbles over a way to tell Dean, can't wrap his mouth around the words. Knows Dean wouldn't hear them anyway.

He lies in silence and listens to the sound of Dean breathing in the other bed, and he whispers thanks with real gratitude. He's not sure Dean would ever understand.

 

viii.

Sam looks at his hands and sees blood red under his nails after killing Steve Wandell. He can taste malt liquor and cigarettes, stale on his breath when he wakes up, like his body remembers even if his brain doesn't. For weeks after, he can't bear the smell of Jo's shampoo, soured by fear and sweat, has to force himself not to recoil when a woman they're interviewing uses the same brand.

He tamps it down, doesn't want to talk about it--has nothing to talk _about_\--and for once he's glad Dean doesn't push.

He made Dean promise and he regrets it now, knowing what that promise cost, and knowing it will be broken.

 

ix

Dean says, Don't you be mad at me. Don't you do that, and the desperate love and fear in his voice, in his eyes, makes Sam force his anger down, bite back the words that'll only make it worse--how could you? and I didn't ask for this and it's not worth it, all things he believes and doesn't at the same time, cognitive dissonance an old friend.

When Dean finally collapses into an exhausted sleep, tight lines around his mouth finally easing, Sam stays awake and watches him, counts the heartbeats and the breaths and wonders how he's going to save Dean the way Dean's always saved him.

In the morning, he sits at the table with Bobby's books. Dean takes Ellen into town for groceries and then spends most of the day washing the car. He comes into the kitchen late in the afternoon, smelling of early spring and motor oil.

"You eat anything?" The sound of Dean's voice is startling after a day of nothing but words on a page and the steady metronome of his heartbeat counting down the time, and the sound of Bobby's dogs barking in the distance. "Sam?"

"Uh, I had some coffee this morning." Sam looks at the thin film of coffee coating the bottom of his mug.

Dean washes his hands and then rummages around the cabinets. He turns and tosses something at Sam, and Sam instinctively catches it. "To tide you over until dinner." It's an apple, glossy and red, and he takes a bite, suddenly ravenous.

 

x.

When Dean hands him the wrench and steps away from the engine, it's like he's giving Sam the best gift he's ever gotten at the worst possible time. Sam gave up trying to break into the closed circle of Dad and Dean and the car when he was a kid; to be pulled in _now_, when Dad's gone and Dean's planning to follow him, makes Sam's eyes sting. It isn't fair, he thinks, bending over the engine and forcing himself not to cry.

"Put your shoulder into it," Dean says from his seat on the cooler, and Sam snuffles a laugh that sounds weak even to his own ears.

Later, Sam can't get the grease out from under his fingernails, but his grumbling is all for Dean's benefit. In bed that night, he presses his hands to his face and inhales, pretending he can still smell the car, Dean, _home_ on his fingertips.

 

xi.

Sam's made an art of leaving, but he's never been any good at letting go, and a hundred Tuesdays make it harder, make him more determined to hang on. The six months that follow have left no visible scars, but the memories are etched with acid in Sam's brain, along with the lost, hollow feeling in his gut and the taste of adrenaline in his mouth.

He wraps himself around Dean, body and soul, words like chains to bind them: I want my brother back, and I watched you die and I can't do it again, and when all else fails, Please, Dean and don't die, as if Dean has any control over it, even now. As if by sheer force of will, he can keep Dean alive.

 

xii.

Florida is five days and ten states away, and Sam is full of tequila and beer when he crawls into Dean's bed, loose-limbed and desperate.

"Dean," he says. All the questions he's ever asked live in that single slurred syllable, the same place all the answers reside.

Dean rolls over, not even half-asleep. "Yeah?"

"Dean," Sam says again, pressing closer, and then they're breathing the same air. He can smell the cut-rate bubblegum toothpaste Dean bought to piss him off, though underneath he can still taste tequila on his tongue.

He takes a deep breath, swallows the nervousness that's been stopping him from doing this for months, all the regrets that piled up when he thought he'd never get the chance, and kisses Dean.

Dean's lips are soft and warm against his, and they open easily when Sam outlines them with his tongue, licks his way into Dean's mouth. He curls his tongue around Dean's, just another question mark in an endless, lifelong line of them, and as always, even without speaking, Dean promises an answer. He's always preferred actions to words.

Sam laughs and kisses Dean again, and Dean holds him tight. Sam hopes he never lets go.

 

xiii.

The air stinks of sulfur and ozone as the rain washes away what's left of the demon army--ashes and dust and salt, older than the earth and melting into it. Nothing will grow here again, Sam thinks, looking at the lightning-struck oak, the withered border of yarrow.

"Sam?" Dean's voice carries like thunder, and Sam answers like lightning, hands cupping Dean's face to tip it up for a kiss, tasting rain and grit and _life_ in the heat of Dean's mouth.

end

~*~


End file.
